"signing avatars" and other machine interpretation projects

[Dan Parvaz]

> I hate to admit it, but the tough competition in computer science for
> research grants has led to a pervasive culture of exaggerating claims
> what "our" systems can and cannot do, and what they are useful
> for.

This sort of misrepresentation in conferences and the research
literature is bad enough. Given time, the processes of science stand a
chance of mitigating that. What really sticks in my craw are the
commercial products that are currently being touted as replacements for
human interpreters (usually in schools, where administrators and parents
are none the wiser). These packages are usually nothing more than a
speech-to-text engine, (maybe) a stemmer, and something that takes a
single word and kicks out a canned video for it. "Audacious" is too
low-key a word for this sort of dreck.

Harrumph, :-)

Dan.